“Revolution, revolution, Syria is revolution!”

By David

It’s not everyday you hear protesters on Auckland’s Queen Street chanting the words “revolution”. It’s even less likely that the whole crowd will be chanting with the passion and determination that says the revolution is real and right now, not a slogan for the distant future.

But today in Syria, and across the Arab world, revolutions are under way. And on Sunday 100 people, mostly from Auckland’s Syrian community, turned out to show their solidarity with Syria’s democracy movement.

Syria has existed under a “state of emergency” since 1963, when the Baath Party took power. Repression was increased from 1970 when general Hafiz Assad took took power in an internal coup. His son Bashar is now president. This means no free speech, no protests no complaints.

Revolts against the current regime in the late ’70s and early ’80s were brutally crushed. In Hama, tens of thousands were killed by government forces in 1982.

Such massive repression had an impact on many people’s lives. One Auckland protester, Ali said his grandfather had narrowly escape execution in Hama, while his uncle was later “disappeared” by the regime. Although the family learned he had died in prison there were no official records.

In such cases the grief of families is compounded by the fact that wives cannon remarry and property cannon be inherited, because the disappeared are not officially dead. “It is a small problem [compared with the death of that person] but it is also big problem”, Ali said.

News of the what happened in Hama was kept secret from the world. Syrians themselves learned of the massacre, but dared not speak openly about it. For 30 years the memory of the revolt and its repression meant most Syrians were too afraid to raise their voices in protest.

Now, in the wake of the revolutions in Tunisia and Egyp, things have changed. Even so, the first response to these revolutions was not mass protests. That came only after a group of 10 to 15 year old school children (who were, perhaps too young to be afraid of what had happened 30 years ago,) wrote protest graffiti on the walls of the small city of Daraa. They were arrested and tortured by police. Outraged, their parents protested and others joined in. Even security forces shooting and killing people did not stop the protests, which spread through the country.

At first the protests were simply calling for reform and the protection of civil liberties, such as the right to free speech, not the overthrow of the government. But as this has only been met with the murder of protesters, the fateful slogan of the new Arab revolt is being heard, “The people want the regime to fall!”

Amongst the oppression there are positive signs. For repression the government relies mostly on the special forces. Described as “little gods”, because they exploit their position to get anything they want, these men have a stake in defending the regime.

The regular army is made up largely of conscripts, the sons, brothers and cousins of those who are protesting. Soldiers have had their cellphones confiscated, to try and cut them off from the people. But in at least one case, regular soldiers moved to protect protesters from the special forces, and were shot at for their trouble.

Even in Aotearoa protesters fear that by coming out on the streets they could endanger their families in Syria, but with people back home facing up to the guns of the regime, they feel they must do what they can to let the world know what is happening in Syria.

Now example of Hama inspires not just fear, but determination. People know if they do not succeed, the government remains in power, then the lives of everyone who has protested, their friends and their family will be in danger.

“There is no way back, we have to go forward to freedom.”

For more on the Syrian revolt and solidarity events in Auckland, check out Syria Solidarity on Facebook.

Invitation to meeting in Auckland on capitalism's terminal crises

m e e t i n g     i n v i t a t i o n

terminal 5

how Arab revolutions 
and unnatural disasters

fit with the five terminal crises 
of global capitalism

Feudalism, slavery and every previous civilisation in world history had seemed all-powerful to its citizens until a cluster of fatal crises sent the system plunging into a death spiral – and the painful birth of another type of civilisation.

So it will be with global capitalism. Today the world system we live under faces certain doom from the uncontrollable intensification and interaction of five terminal crises: • profitability • ecology • resources • imperialism • legitimacy.

The future of humanity is at stake. People wishing to influence the future must be able to read the signs in order to design realistic strategies for human survival and social solidarity.

GRANT MORGAN is a longtime ecosocialist in NZ and editor of Arab solidarity website kiaoragaza.net. He has been investigating how the five terminal crises of world capitalism link into the wave of Arab democratic revolutions and the terrible tsunami of unnatural disasters (earthquakes triggered by climate change).

Grant will be speaking on these era-altering issues. After his talk there will be open floor discussion. You and your family and friends are invited to attend.

Meeting details:

7pm on Friday 22 April
Socialist Centre, 86 Princes St, Onehunga, Auckland

Contact Vaughan Gunson, email svpl@xtra.co.nz or ph/txt 021 0415 082

Why We Revolt

When and how does the moment come when people stop believing in the power that has ruled them? When and how do ordinary people discover their own power?

by Rebecca Solnit

Yes! Magazine

A protester in Cairo during the uprising against former President Hosni Mubarak.

Photo by Kodak Afga

Revolution is as unpredictable as an earthquake and as beautiful as spring. Its coming is always a surprise, but its nature should not be.

Revolution is a phase, a mood, like spring, and just as spring has its buds and showers, so revolution has its ebullience, its bravery, its hope, and its solidarity. Some of these things pass. The women of Cairo do not move as freely in public as they did during those few precious weeks when the old rules were suspended and everything was different. But the old Egypt is gone and Egyptians’ sense of themselves—and our sense of them—is forever changed.

No revolution vanishes without effect. The Prague Spring of 1968 was brutally crushed, but 21 years later when a second wave of revolution liberated Czechoslovakia, Alexander Dubcek, who had been the reformist Secretary of the Czechoslovakian Communist Party, returned to give heart to the people from a balcony overlooking Wenceslas Square: "The government is telling us that the street is not the place for things to be solved, but I say the street was and is the place. The voice of the street must be heard."

But when exactly do the abuses that have been tolerated for so long become intolerable? When does the fear evaporate and the rage generate action that produces joy?

 

Mark Steel: It’s Blair I feel really sorry for

By Mark Steel

Isn’t it marvelous that all these governments are determined to do "something" about Colonel Gaddafi? For example Hillary Clinton said she supported military action once the Arab League – made up of countries such as Bahrain, Syria, Yemen and Saudi Arabia – backed the air strikes. And it is encouraging that the policy of not tolerating a dictator has the backing of so many dictators.

Some people might suggest that one way King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, for example, might reduce the number of Arab dictators, would be to stop being an Arab dictator, but that’s because they don't understand how complicated these things can be.

Thinking About Reactions to Libya and Each Other

By Michael Albert

Thought One

Good, insightful people can have conflicting views about Libya, the Mideast, and North Africa, and the UN and U.S. role there.

Rather than flinging verbal daggers at one another until irretrievable splits permanently part us, can we disagree but also hear others and realize we may not be right? Can we even find a way to pursue the logic of our views, differences and all, in a shared agenda?

Attack on Libya aims to reassert Western dominance

By David

The Western powers now bombing Libyan are protecting their easy access to Libyan, Saudi and Gulf oil and their overall control of the Arab World, which they have dominated since Britain and France carved up the Turkish-dominated Ottoman Empire after World War One (1914-18).

The rise of Arab Nationalism after World War Two threatened Western control, but with the help of Israel (formed by Jewish settlers in what had been Palestine in 1948), the US was able to reassert Western control.

Now the structure of imperial domination has taken a huge hit from the uprisings, particularly the fall of Mubarak in Egypt. The US and its allies know they must do something to ensure that whatever new order emerges it will still be under their control.

That easy bit, for them, is backing the Saudi / Kuwaiti / UAE invasion of Bahrain, to ensure the revolution is crushed there and does not spread. The kings of Saudi Arabia and of the smaller Gulf states have been important US allies for decades, providing cheap oil, military bases and political support within the Arab world. For any of these regimens to fall to democracy would be a huge set back for the US.

The hard decision was deciding what to do in Libya. When he first came to power 1969 Gaddafi was inspired by the Arab nationalism and Chinese Maoism. But the nationalists had already been defeated by Israel in the Six Day War of 1967, after which it occupied Gaza and the West Bank, as well as large parts of Syria and Egypt.

Like Syria, Libya remained independent from the US, but anti-imperialist and socialist rhetoric masked brutal dictatorships. Over the last ten years Gaddafi has made his peace with the West, but he is not dependent on them, and therefore not a reliable ally.

Waging war, nominally in support of, and at the request of, the rebels is a golden opportunity for the West to relegitimise military attacks in the Middle East after the disasters of Afghanistan and Iraq. It also offers the possibility of a new government dependant on Western support controlling either part or all of Libya and its oil. Most importantly, it allows the West to assert some control in this vital part of the world.

Stop the War UK: UN Declares War on Libya

1) STOP THE WAR STATEMENT: UN DECLARATION OF WAR ON LIBYA

A new war has been declared in the Middle East. With the bloody and failing
occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan still in place, the USA, Britain and France
are now committed to an escalating armed intervention in Libya.

The decision to attack Libya and impose regime change – for that is what the
UN resolution means – may have been authorised by the Security Council. But
it was instigated by the despots of the Arab League, desperate to secure deeper
western involvement in the region to save them from their own peoples. And it
will be implemented by the same powers which have wreaked such mayhem
throughout the Arab and Muslim worlds over the last ten years and longer.

The imposition of a “no-fly zone”, air attacks on Libyan defences and
Gaddaffi’s troops, and naval bombardments will not bring peace to Libya nor a
resolution to the conflict there. 

They will, however, cost more civilian lives and they will set Britain and the
world on an escalator of military intervention which risks ending up with an
occupation of at least part of Libya.

While few people are admirers of the Gaadaffi regime, the experience of Iraq
underlines the dangerous futility of trying to impose “regime change” from
without. It also reminds us that genuine democracy and freedom cannot grow from
aerial bombardment and foreign occupation.

Attacking Libya and sponsoring the Gulf oligarchies’ invasion of Bahrain to
prop up the threatened monarchy there – under the noses of the US fifth fleet
- are of a piece. They represent a concerted effort by the western powers to
first control and then bring to a halt the Arab revolutions, leaving the
essentials of imperial power in the Middle East in place.

David Cameron’s decision to place Britain in the vanguard of efforts to
topple the Gaddafi regime is dictated by the same considerations which led Tony
Blair and Gordon Brown to embrace that same regime – a desire to maintain
BP’s profitable access to Libyan oil.

Stop the War believes that there should be no external military intervention in
Libya. In supporting the Arab revolutions, we believe that these will be
strangled, not supported, by western military action.

We call on the British government to keep its hands off the Middle East and
demand that it refrain from all involvement in military action in Libya or
elsewhere in the region. We urge the anti-war movement to campaign throughout
the country to arrest and reverse this slide to war and British participation
in it.

Revolutionary Hope and Change Across the 'Arab World'

By Gilbert Achcar

and Ali Mustafa
Source: New Socialist

Gilbert Achcar is a Lebanese writer, socialist, and antiwar activist. He is also a professor of Development Studies and International Relations at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in London, and author most recently of The Arabs and the Holocaust: the Arab-Israeli War of Narratives. In this interview, he discusses the significance of the ongoing revolutionary wave of mass protests occurring across the Middle East with one of the New Socialist webzine editors Ali Mustafa.

This Is An Arab 1848. But US Hegemony Is Only Dented

With western-backed despots being turfed out politics has changed for ever. So just how far can the revolution spread?

By Tariq Ali

Source: The Gaurdian

Friday, February 25, 2011

Revolutionary murals on the walls of newly established toilet facilities for protesters in Cairo's Tahrir Square. Photograph: Ben Curtis/AP

Auckland: Solidarity with Bahrain’s revolution -- Saudi Troops Out!

The peaceful protestors at the Pearl Roundabout in Bahrain have again been slaughtered. A month ago, it was by their own Government. Now, it is with the support of foreign Saudi troops.

On Saturday 19th at 2pm, we will gather in Aotea Square, to listen to members of the Bahraini Community and their supporters, before we march to the Saudi Consulate.

Saudi Troops Out.
Down with the Bahraini Junta.
Power to the People
Victory to the Bahraini Revolution.

more info at- http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=188981107789270

Public letter from Bahraini protesters to Barack Obama

From  jadaliyya.com

[This is a public letter addressed to US President Barack Obama from by protesters in Bahrain under the name “Movement of 14 February.” The letter was circulated on March 15, 2011]

Mr President,

You certainly know about the Saudi and other gulf troops arriving to Bahrain to aid the government in clamping down the peaceful protesters. If you can find any legal, logical or ethical justification for this intervention, can you find any justification as well to them forming thugs attacking peaceful Bahrainis in their own homes and villages, killing them with live rounds, intimidating women and children in these areas, and boasting themselves with a "claimed" American green light!!

Mr President, having listened to your addresses in many occasions, we find it difficult to believe that you and the United States could stand by in such an inhumane and resentful situation that Bahrainis are witnessing today, for the simple sin of peacefully claiming civic, political and human rights. We urge you Mr. President to take a position that will be remembered by your own people as well as the Bahraini people and all peoples in this miserable region of the world.

We ask for a clear and firm stance from the US administration towards the ill-intentioned, arrogant and murderous actions of the Bahraini regime with the help of neighboring Gulf regimes.

This is the outcry of peaceful Bahraini protesters, and we heartily hope that it will meet your wise and just support.


Movement of 14 February